[plug][OT] Who's a Good Hardware Supplier in Perth?

[Chris Caston]

On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 23:02, Arie Hol wrote:
> On 6 Sep 2005 at 22:28, Craig Ringer wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 21:07 +0800, Chris Caston wrote:
> > 
> > > But is anyone else working in IT becoming serious sick of all the stuff
> > > that we import all the time?
> > 
> > Sick of it? Not really. Worried about it in an economic sense? Yes. I
> > don't see that much can be done currently, though, and it's something
> > I'm hoping will balance out with other sectors.
> 8<---- snip ---->8
>  
> > I'd prefer to buy local produce ... but not when I expect it'd cost 3x
> > as much, and most likely not be that much better, if at all. I don't
> > think I'd trust any local HDD manufacturer without some time to prove
> > themselves; ditto CPUs.
> > 
> 
> 8<---- snip ---->8
> 
> > I'm rather more optimistic about the software industry in Australia,
> > personally. Hardware requires a massive startup and on-going investment,
> > with low costs and huge volumes to be expensive. Or would you pay $70
> > for a 10/100 NIC from .au Inc when you can buy a gigabit Realtek for
> > $12 ?
> > 
> 
> Even if you could get all this to happen here in Australia - how long would it be before these 
> "Australian made" products are provisioned from overseas sources, manufactured by overseas sources 
> and/or assembled by overseas sources (all under license to Australian companies - of course ).
> 
> Remember the industrial revolutions - first it was Japan that provided the cheap crap to Australia -
>  then Taiwan - Korea - #insert any others here# - and now we are the glorious recipients of 
> products from China. 
> 


China is so much bigger than any of those previous nations. They have
lots of people to feed and keep in line. I think they will be a
manufacturing giant for at least 50 years.

At what point they will become a democracy is anyones guess.

regards,

Chris